LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)–Showing love to homosexuals means telling them the truth about their lifestyle, R. Albert Mohler Jr. told a national audience March 9 on CNN’s “Larry King Live” news talk show.
“I love homosexuals. I want the very best for them,” said Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. “But when you love someone, you want them to have the very best. I want them to understand God’s purpose in sexuality and marriage. Just giving persons what they want is not necessarily showing your love for them.”
God’s purpose for heterosexual marriage was not punishment, but blessing, Mohler said.
“It’s so sad to me that so much of the conversation seems to be as if God has limited sex to heterosexual marriage in order to cut off all kinds of fun elsewhere, when actually God gave us this institution for our good, for our pleasure, for the procreation of our species,” Mohler said. “I want for homosexuals what I want for everyone else, and that is redemption in Jesus Christ, wholeness before God and the celebration of God’s good creation by his created intention.”
Mohler was one of six guests discussing the topic of homosexual marriages and specifically California’s Proposition 22, which voters there overwhelmingly approved March 7.
The proposition reaffirmed California’s law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman and closed a legal loophole that would have forced California to accept homosexual marriages from other states.
Other guests included radio talk show host Dennis Prager; former talk show host Charles Perez; author Marianne Williamson; “Frasier” actor Dan Butler; and Steve Yuhas, co-chair of Gays for Proposition 22.
Mohler said he rejected the notion of homosexual marriage “because their relationship is by no means a marriage.”
“It is in no way equivalent to marriage, and it is predicated upon a rejection of what this entire civilization is based on, and that is the fidelity of heterosexual marriage,” Mohler said. “It is a direct confrontation — a revolution, indeed — that seeks to break down the most basic building block of our society.”
Along with cultural and social concerns about homosexual marriages, Mohler said his deepest concern was from a theological standpoint. Homosexuality, he said, is in direct violation of God’s law and contrary to marriage as God intended it.
“Men were created for women, women for men, and a heterosexual marriage as a holy covenant is a place where that relationship is to be established, and where the gift of sex is to be exercised and where children are to be raised,” Mohler said.
King asked Mohler what made him better than homosexuals. “It isn’t me being better than they are,” Mohler replied. “It is a case of my relationship, a man related to a woman, being the one that has been privileged in Western civilization and in all cultures around the world since the very beginning of time, and for very good reason.”
Mohler cited a March 9 editorial in The San Francisco Examiner lamenting what it called the romantic and religious baggage around marriage and calling for its abolition.
“Well, that isn’t baggage. That’s the very core of what marriage is,” Mohler said. “What we are seeing here is the effort of the homosexual activist community to break down the very foundation of the culture, the society, and to put in place an alternative understanding not only of marriage, but of life.”
A caller to the program asked Mohler why it was OK for men and women to get married four, five or six times, and not for homosexual men and women to get married only once.
“I’ll tell you right off that there are a lot of heterosexuals that mess up marriage and deny God’s ideal and sin even in the context of heterosexual adultery,” Mohler replied. “That does not invalidate the institution of heterosexual marriage. The problem with two men or two women together is that just isn’t a marriage. It’s a rejection of the very institution of marriage.”
King made a reference to Mohler’s statement about loving homosexuals: “Reverend Mohler, when you said you loved gays, Charles laughed and Dan smiled. They don’t believe you. How can you convince them?” King asked.
“That’s because they define love as indulgence, and again, I have to define all of these issues against something else,” Mohler said. “It’s not just a matter of my preference. When I hear Marianne Williamson talk about God [Williamson said she and millions of Americans worshiped only a God of love], it’s simply the God of her invention. It’s not the God of Scripture. The God of Scripture defined himself as a God of both love and of judgment. And the right kind of love is honest, honest enough to tell people the truth, honest enough to hope and pray for them the very best. And that does not mean giving persons what they want.”
